


Sherlollipops - Out

by MizJoely



Series: 221 Sherlollipops [110]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Gen, Parentlock, Sherlolly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 21:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5348426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizJoely/pseuds/MizJoely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ms. Umbrella on ff.net said: I have a prompt for you! It's actually two and I hope it's okay...They're both parent!lock. The first one is~ one of Molly's and Sherlock's kids comes out of the closet- how do they react? The second one is~ one of their kids have lice, and Sherlock is panicking because he's scared for his hair. P.s- love your writing!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sherlollipops - Out

**Author's Note:**

> Here is the first prompt. I decided to make it in the same universe as my Simon & Lydia stories from my Sherlolly AU Prompts collection. You don't have to read those to read this, but I hope you do! This one is rated T. There are mentions of non-heterosexuality for more than one character, so if that's not your thing you might want to skip this one.
> 
> Also, the second prompt became "Hair Today...", part of my izzywatsonverse. It's story 25 in my "Lullabye: Tales of Baby Watson & The Holmes Twins" collection.   
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/1527668/chapters/12817025
> 
> Unbetaed and I own nothing except Simon and Lydia. And the twins.

“Simon? Is there a reason you’ve been avoiding me?”

Sixteen-year-old Simon Hooper-Holmes looked up at his father, who was standing quietly in the doorway. Simon was seated cross-legged on his bed, his shaggy brown curls hiding his eyes as he mumbled something about doing no such thing.

“Don’t lie to your father, you know I’m far too good at my job for that to wash,” Sherlock replied crisply as he entered the room, not bothering to shut the door behind him since they were alone in the flat. “Lydia and Molly say you’ve been acting, and I quote, ‘weird’ ever since you got back from your summer in Sussex. Out with it.”

Something about his word choice seemed to bother Simon even more; he hunched his shoulders and lowered his head so that even more of his hair hung down to camouflage his face. It was one of his tells, when he didn’t want his father to be able to see his expression and make deductions about him.

Too bad. There was clearly something bothering the boy, who’d barely said two words to anyone since stepping off the train. His summer learning to be an apiarist, as he’d long wanted to do, had gone very well; he’d admitted that much, and the evidence of his excited Skype chats backed that up. So what had changed in the last week before leaving Sussex and returning to London?

“Is this about Donna Patton?” Sherlock asked, rather proud of himself for actually remembering the name of the last girl Simon had dated. Considering that his son seemed determined to out-do his Uncle John when it came to the number of romantic partners he was accumulating before he’d even left his teens, it was quite an accomplishment.

“Sort of,” Simon mumbled. He was fidgeting now, toying with his tablet – an antiquated model he’d been given to use since the rural part of Sussex he’d been staying at didn’t have the more modern infrastructure to support a holographic matrix – and twitching his feet.

Sherlock gave a silent sigh and sat down on the edge of his son’s bed. “Tell me,” he said quietly, using the tone that all four of the Hooper-Holmes children recognized as being his most implacable. The one that said ‘I will not be put off so you may as well tell me what I want to know.’

Simon’s sigh was quite audible, but at least he followed it a few seconds later with a rush of words. “I broke up with her since we weren’t going to be together over the summer and then there was this girl at Hoscombe House and we hit it off but then at the end of the summer I met someone else and now I’m just…I’m really confused, Dad,” he confessed.

Sherlock quietly processed both what his son had said – and what he hadn’t said. “Tell me about this ‘someone else’,” he said. When Simon remained silent, the tension in his posture only growing, Sherlock said gently, “Tell me about this boy.”

“I should’ve known you’d figure it out,” Simon grumbled, but Sherlock could also hear the relief in his son’s voice.

“Would you like your mother to be in on this conversation, or is this one of those ‘father-son’ things she’s always prodding us about?” Sherlock grumbled right back.

That surprised a laugh out of him, exactly as he’d hoped. “No, I mean, yes, I’ll want to talk to Mum, but I think I’d…you’re not disappointed in me, are you?”

“What, because you think you’re gay? There’s hardly a stigma attached to that sexuality these days, Simon, not like when I was your age.” He was about to give a reassuring speech about how he and Molly would always love him no matter what and would welcome anyone he brought home into their lives as long as they didn’t turn out to have some sort of criminal background (or worse, a family member who was a journalist), but paused. Something about the way Simon was reacting… “Tell me the rest,” he ordered, wishing that Molly actually was here to help him out instead of picking Lydia up from her father and step-mother’s house in Surrey.

“If I was gay, I could handle that,” Simon said, the words coming out in a rush, faster and faster as he jumped to his feet and raked his fingers through his dark-brown curls. Both habits he’d picked up from his father. His eyes, so like his mother’s, were dark and rather wild-looking as he met his father’s gaze for the first time. “But I think I…I like both, Dad. Guys and girls. I thought maybe I was just, I dunno, interested in girls because I was supposed to be and all my friends are, but I didn’t stop liking them even after I kissed Rob. I saw Donna last night and we kind of made out for a while and she wants to get back together again. And I want to, I really do, but I don’t want to…should I tell her I like guys too? Or is it too soon? And what about Mum, she won’t care will she? Do you? Does it make me a freak or…”

“Simon.” Sherlock’s voice was sharp, but it needed to be in order to calm his son down. The last thing either of them needed was a full-blown meltdown. “Sit,” Sherlock added, pointing to the bed next to him. Simon shuffled over and plopped onto the mattress, once again avoiding his father’s gaze. He started to twist his hands together, then jammed them up under his armpits.

Sherlock gave them both a minute to compose themselves, then started talking. “Molly knows all this of course, and there’s no reason not to tell either you or Lydia. And since it’s become pertinent, tell it I will.” He could feel the weight of Simon’s gaze and knew without looking that his son would be staring at him through his overgrown fringe, cutting his eyes sideways in the vain hope that he would appear to be looking straight ahead. But at least he had his full attention. “Before I met Molly, there was your biological mother, of course.” Irene Adler, who hadn’t bothered to get in touch with either her ex-husband or her son since the divorce fifteen years ago. “But before her there was someone else. And no, not several someone else’s, I’m not your Uncle John. Just one someone else. Ask me who that was.”

“Who was it?” Simon asked obediently. His hands were still jammed under his armpits, but his posture had relaxed a bit. Good.

“His name was Victor, Victor Trevor. We met in Uni and if I hadn’t gotten myself in trouble with drugs, he and I might never have broken up.”

Simon was silent as he processed his father’s words. “So you…did you think you were gay or did you know after you broke up with him that you were…bi?”

Sherlock allowed a very small, very brief smile to curve his lips before he responded. His son had said the word that had hung in the air unspoken. It was a shame that in this day and age anyone would still be prejudiced against bi-sexuality, but there it was. Small minds still couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of being equally attracted to both male and female partners. “I always knew I was bi-sexual,” Sherlock replied easily. “Just like I always knew your Uncle Mycroft was gay and your Uncle John was straight. My parents figured it out quickly enough, although for a long time I think they despaired of us ever finding anyone we could fall in love with. That’s all they ever wanted for us, and that’s all I ever want for you and Lydia and the twins. To eventually find someone to make you as happy as your grandparents are, or as happy as Molly and I have been.”

“Uncle John says you used to think being alone protected you,” Simon said, finally peeking over at his father. “And Uncle Mycroft isn’t married and never seems to date anyone longer than a few months at a time, if he dates anyone at all.”

“Believe me, it took decades for your uncle to finally decide that maybe the rest of the human race outside our immediate family wasn’t just so much goldfish,” Sherlock assured his son with a grin. “And frankly anyone who could put up with him for more than a few months at a time is deserving of a sainthood and therefore much too good for him.”

Simon grinned back, but the troubled expression soon returned to his face. “But isn’t it just easier to be alone? To not have to deal with all this…stuff?”

“It is,” Sherlock replied honestly. “But frankly, it sucks.” Simon snorted at his father’s use of such a quaint old term, just as Sherlock wanted him to. The less tension in his son’s slight frame, the better. “It took me a long time to realize that after Victor and I split up. It took meeting your Uncle John and having a good friend for the first time in my life, someone who saw the best in me and took no issue with the worst. Then I met your mother and for a while I thought I’d found the one person who mattered most to me in the world…but of course I was wrong.”

Simon nodded. “Right, cause she left us and you met Molly.”

Sherlock smiled softly. “You’re half-right, Simon. Molly is exactly who I needed in my life…but the one who mattered the most was already there and still is.”

Simon’s eyes widened as he realized his father was talking about him; his cheeks flushed a little as he ducked his head but Sherlock could see the smile trying to break out. “Dad, don’t let Mum hear you say things like that, she’ll be jealous.”

Sherlock groaned and finally did what he’d wanted to do ever since he’d entered the room: he draped an arm over his son’s shoulder and hugged him close to his side. “Don’t tell jokes, Simon, yours are as bad as hers. Lydia’s the only one in this family who managed to get a proper sense of humor.”

“Who has a proper sense of humor? Am I interrupting something?” Molly was peering around the half-opened door; neither father nor son had heard her come up the stairs. “Lydia’s fetching the twins from John and Mary’s, and I can see that I actually am interrupting something so I think I’ll just go downstairs and put supper on.”

“No, Mum, it’s OK,” Simon said, jumping to his feet as she made to back out of the doorway. He glanced down at his father, who gave him an encouraging nod. Taking a deep breath, Simon turned to face the woman who’d come be such an important part of all their lives, the one he’d called ‘Mum’ since he was seven years old. “I was just telling Dad something. Something about me.”

As he spoke and Molly listened, he felt the tightness in his chest evaporate. Her loving smile and warm embrace when he finished speaking were all the answer he needed: he was loved by both parents and always would be.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first attempt at tackling such a sensitive subject and if I failed miserably I apologize. Also, please don’t heap hate on me for stealing “the one who mattered most” because any parent will tell you that will always be their child(ren).


End file.
